Between Bioregion and Globalization: Ecocriticism in the Latin-American Essay

Abstract

Ecocriticism is a field that has been growing exponentially over the past decades, especially in the U.S. and Europe. This article connects some of the main ideas and objectives of ecocriticism with Latin American thought, in order to show that ecocriticism has been very much present and practiced among Latin American intellectuals, albeit implicitly. Two examples are the Mexican economist and bio-sociologist Enrique Leff Zimmerman and the writer Carlos Fuentes. By creating a dialogue between current ecocritical discourse, and Leff and Fuentes, I will show that the Latin American essay can provide us with an expansive and fertile discursive space for ecocriticism today, given its shared vision of a relational reality, their appreciation of and concern for alterity, and their efforts to promote an inclusive modernity based on an ecological rationality. The comparative approach presented in this chapter proposes a reevaluation, from an ecocritical perspective, of issues that are central to the Latin-American essay, such as progress and modernity, mestizaje and plurality, and the interrelations of the local and the global.